


If I Were You

by Lothiriel84



Series: SOL: A Self-Banishment Ritual [3]
Category: The Bunker (Podcast)
Genre: Backstory, Drinking, Gen, I Don't Even Know, Identity Issues, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Smoking, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:01:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23738017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lothiriel84/pseuds/Lothiriel84
Summary: If I were you I’d crawl out from the shelterAnd dance a dizzy samba through the ashIf I were you I’d spin into a smoke ringTill each festering bandage is a festival sash
Relationships: David Knight & David Price (The Bunker)
Series: SOL: A Self-Banishment Ritual [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1704295
Kudos: 1





	If I Were You

He snaps, eventually, and it’s not so much a breakdown as it comes as a revelation – there’s hardly any call for existential dread and despair when nothing truly matters anymore, and he finds it oddly liberating for some reason. Who cares if David has a minor meltdown over how messy the kitchen drawer has got over the past few years, and subsequently spends the better part of two days rearranging all cutlery into specifically colour-coded compartments that only make sense in his head? They could be eating canned bread straight out of the tins for all he cares, and he even tells Tom as much on one occasion.

Tom looks at him like he believes he finally lost it, and maybe he did, but he’s starting to think that out of the three of them, David may be onto something after all – emotions are only dragging them down, and in many ways, he finds he’s done being in charge of his own continued survival when he can delegate such an emotionally draining task to the control freak of the group, and to hell with whatever happens next.

This turn of events seems to baffle David at first, up until he realises that Dave’s acquiescence means Tom is in a minority of one now; after that, it’s David’s Rules all the way down, much to Tom’s chagrin, even more so in the face of Dave’s blatant lack of interest either way.

“I can’t believe you won’t back me up on this, man,” Tom blurts out late one evening – days have stopped meaning anything at all, buried as they are in their underground time capsule of a world long gone. “I thought we were friends.”

He shrugs and downs the rest of his beer – it’s decades past its expiration date and pretty much tastes like piss, but it’s either that or the leftover tank of ethanol which was once used as a solvent in pharmaceutical preparations. Tom shakes his head in disbelief and stalks out of the common room, leaving him to contemplate whatever happened to that other Dave who once used to occupy this same physical space, yet is now naught but a distant echo of a memory long gone.

Three nights later David knocks at his door for the first time; it’s been longer for him than it has for Dave, he reckons, and while David’s not as catastrophically bad at it as Jerry used to be, he’s not much better, either. Still, it’s _something_ , and to be honest, he’d take pretty much anything at this point. By unspoken agreement, not a single word is exchanged during the proceedings, and come morning they both pretend it never happened.

And if in the following days he has to fight the occasional urge to seek out any further, unsolicited contact when they pass one another in the common room, that’s neither here nor there. That’s sex for you, his body still craving the physical release it went without for so long.

Well, too bad, he thinks, and reaches for a new packet of cigarettes. Better to keep it uncomplicated, he resolves, and slowly climbs onto the rooftop to get a breath of fresh, radioactive air into his lungs.


End file.
